Photo by Serge Poulin
After the teams traded goals in the opening period, Quebec added two in the second period and never looked back in stopping the Titans’ winning streak at ten.
Tomas Filippi with two goals and an assist led Quebec in front of 14203 happy fans who returned home satisfied.
For one, Quebec head coach Patrick Roy was happy to see his players perform well.
“It was one of our best performances at even strength. We also played very well with a man down,” Roy said. “I’m very happy about the team performance we had a great challenge in front of us tonight, Bathurst was on a sequence of 10-0-0-1 something like that and our guys were able to step their game up especially in front of great crowd, it’s always fun to perform in front of great crowd like that.”
Bathurst came into Quebec playing physical in the opening period but they visited the penalty box often (17 times) totaling 32 minutes in penalties beginning with a penalty right before the first puck drop with a bench minor. Bathurst head coach Real Paiement was the first to admit his error.
“We took too many penalties for starter,” said the Titans coach. “It was a stupid mistake for my part (not sending the right player on the ice to begin the game) especially against the best power play in the league so it’s not good. We took too many penalties against a team like that, we loses too many players trying to kill the penalties, so when we had some power plays we weren’t able to perform up to the task we didn’t had any energy left.”
Quebec opened the scoring with first of the night by right winger Tomas Filippi who beat Titans goaltender high on Olivier Roy right side 3:22 into the first period.
Bathurst tied the game 33 seconds later when Yoan Pinette took a rebound from former Remparts player Sebastien Trudeau and wristed it behind Quebec goalie Jimmy Appleby who ended the game making 14 saves on Bathurst 15 shots.
Quebec began the second sending their power play unit on the ice after Bathurst had been guilty of too many men on the ice at 20:00 minutes of the first period. Unfortunately for the fans in the building they saw Bathurst netminder stop all Remparts scoring chances.
The patience of Quebec German forward Mirko Hoefflin benefited his team when the center put the puck right on his teammate’s defenseman Mikael Tam who beat Roy on his glove side at 15:11. Filippi with his second of the night 1:02 later seemed to break visiting team’s back.
John Audy-Marchessault completed the scoring for Quebec with his 28th of the year with a man-advantage at 2:59 of the third period.
Marchessault was the first to recognize his team made some adjustments during the game to finally dominate their opponent, “We had some problem to begin with but we were able to make some adjustment when the puck moved more. We took advantage with our first power play in the beginning
Photo by Serge Poulin
Quebec defenseman Mikael Tam who had been criticized a couple of games back by his coach for not playing the kind of game he’s used to, played a much better game against Bathurst ending with 1g-1a and earning the second star of the game. Tam was involved at the end of the game in skirmish against his former teammate David Gilbert.
“Gilbert and I never saw eye-to-eye when he was here, I never really liked him. Tonight we saw what kind of player he really is, he looked like a stupid guy in front of 14000 fans. When you talk a lot and you can’t back up what you said… that’s what happens.”
Quebec’s next game will be this Sunday afternoon hosting the Victoriaville Tigres who lost Friday night to Chicoutimi by the score of 5-2.
Other games in the QMJHL
Saint John 4 vs. Moncton 3
Baie-Comeau 1 vs. Halifax 2
Rimouski 4 vs. Lewiston 5
Chicoutimi 5 vs. Victoriaville 2
Val-d’Or 2 vs. Rouyn-Noranda 1
Contact the author at: serge.poulin@prohockeynews.com
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